Malcolm Owen
Gigabyte has shown off an external graphics card enclosure at Computex that aims to offer better value to those who want to add a graphics card to their MacBook Pro over Thunderbolt 3, with the Aorus-branded GTX 1070 Gaming Box bundling the high-specification graphics card with the enclosure at a lower cost than current alternatives.
Connecting with Thunderbolt 3, the Gaming Box is a relatively compact enclosure with a mesh on one side providing extra cooling to the installed graphics card, supplied as part of the package. Inside is a GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card, reports Guru3D, equipped with 8GB of memory, and a base clock speed of 1,531MHz that can be boosted to 1,721MHz.
Inside the casing is a 450-Watt power supply, though it is unclear if it will provide power to the connected notebook at this time. Aside from the HDMI, DisplayPort, and dual DVI connections on the graphics card, as well as Thunderbolt 3, the enclosure has a collection of four USB 3.0 ports for connecting extra peripherals.
The power supply somewhat contributes to the device's relatively hefty 2-kilogram (4.4 pounds) weight, making it less attractive to be transported along with a notebook, even with its supplied carrying case.
While it is unknown if Gigabyte will be selling the enclosure separately from the graphics card, the Aorus GTX1070 Gaming Box as a complete package may be attractive to some users, due to its price. Gigabyte plans to ship the bundle, consisting of the enclosure and the graphics card combined, for $600 starting in July.
The mini-ITX GTX 1070 can be acquired on its own for around $380 to $400, theoretically putting the cost of the enclosure itself at roughly $200, based on the $600 selling price. For comparison, other enclosures like the PowerColor Devil Box are priced closer to the $400 mark, pushing the equivalent bundle price up to around $800 including the cost of an equivalent GPU.
While acquiring an external graphics card enclosure may be an attractive proposition to provide extra graphical performance to a notebook, such as for playing games, it is worth noting that the market is still in its infancy. While it is relatively simple to connect and use on Windows, it is a slightly more involved procedure to get the extra hardware running on macOS.
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9 Comments
Not bad price.
But dang if if I let anyone see that thing out in the open. Hideous.
How about some dimensions... that thing looks huge.
And 4.4 pounds. Does it have lead shielding for EMPs/radiation protection?
Or you could get an entire Windows gaming laptop with a GTX 1070 for around $1300 on sale or refurbished. That gets you vastly better graphics performance and you can dual boot Hackintosh or run one in a VM. This is the route I took and it is working great thus far. There are even super slim gamer laptops coming out in a few months for those that prefer a sleeker form factor. I would have preferred a Mac but at some point you have to just give up waiting for Apple and just buy a high performance computer. It is nice to finally be able to use my Oculus Rift.
grangerfx
said:
Its a whole lot easier/more stable to get a MacBook and run Windows in a VM (Fusion/Parallels) instead of going the Hackintosh route and doing the opposite. But you're right, a MBP cost 3X+ the price of a Windows laptop, you get a whole lot less GPU, and lately even the Intel CPU has been behind the release curve. Heck, there's a reason I'm still typing this note on a 2012 MBP 15" and not a 2016 MBP. Just not worth $5000+ (MBP/LG5K) to upgrade over the speed of my 2012. Maybe the MBP 15" Coffee Lake will make it worthwhile and by then Apple will be back to making its own 5K monitor again. Still, its GPU will be underpowered out of the box. Whether Apple will continue to allow these external GPU solutions to work is a question I have. Right now the approach seems like a hack at best. Hopefully, in the future Apple will bolster the MBP GPU by officially recognizing the niche in the OS support, or they will bring out their own external GPU box, or throw an external GPU into a monitor of their own. Like you, I am getting pessimistic that they'll put the resources into really innovating the MBP line.